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Old 05-14-2008, 10:11 AM
mhs mhs is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Encinitas, CA
Posts: 1,533
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Hi David,

I don't know if you happened to see my post when I received a Cargo with P/U, but I had very similar problems, and to a smaller extent still do.

The setup wasn't good. The carbon-fiber saddle was wedged stuck in the bridge somewhere short of the bottom of the bridge. It made a muted sound.

To repair it, I had a bone Colossi Taylor saddle sitting around and decided it was just as easy to try that out as anything else, because it wouldn't change the stock saddle (after all this was 5 minutes after I opened it). I quickly shaped the bone saddle to fit since it has same width, shape, compensation, and is only 1/8" longer and dropped it in.

That took care of the muffled sound and helped the balance as much as could be. The thing it really helped was that there was no longer a problem with balance using the pickup. The thing that couldn't be helped by the saddle was that the bias is greatly towards the bass strings when playing acoustic.

I know that Martin lovers in here think that the big bass is great, but this is at the expense of mid and treble. When I'm playing the Cargo, I can barely make out melody lines. I play a full style and need to hear melody lines without having to completely alter my style.

I noticed that the offset sound hole appeared to be the biggest culprit of this problem. If I took a piece of blue masking tape, and taped off the top 1" or so of the sound hole (the part closest to the guitar side edge), that the acoustic sound suddenly was nearly balanced.

Since I had to use it on gigs for the past 3 weeks (was away from home without a backup), I had many chances to ask listeners up close (15 feet away?) about the balance during solos, and without the tape, the listeners had a difficult time making out melodies on the upper strings. With the tape, not nearly as bad.


I think this is a design flaw. Do the bassy Martin guitars that Martinaholics love overpower the treble strings or do they complement them. I'm not talking about strummers, only for playing a fuller style of melody/chords/bass.

Just for the heck of it, you might give the tape trick a try. Yes it looks like crap when you do this, but sound trumps looks, especially in a pinch.
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